1. Background

My background is a bookcase by Refunc, waste-architects.
I studied human geography, art and architectural history at the University of Groningen. Was curator of the City Collection of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen and program coordinator of TENT in Rotterdam.

2. Why are you fascinated with architecture / urban development?

By Jan Dekker, economic geography professor at the University of Groningen, who organized, as an alternative to a mobility survey under clients of a supermarket, a spontaneous architecture excursion in Barcelona. Once, as a boy, I wanted to be an architect. Dekker sparked my interest again. Now as director of Stroom, that’s a cultural interdisciplinary approach to urban environment, I am once again close to architecture and urbanism.

3. Best city

Delta Metropolis.

4. Most beautiful building

Does not exist. Beauty is fragile and, for me, an elusive and irrelevant category.

5. Most beautiful park or square

Each asymmetric square in Venice where footsteps, voices and swifts bounce off walls.

6. Best public facility / urban infill

Bridges over rivers through towns: in and beside, above and between, coming and going, across and along, overview and sublimation - almost always good, never enough.

7. Best 20th and 21st century innovations

Internet and communication satellites.

8. Next groundbreaking innovation

We will rename the Randstad as Amsterdam.

9. About the future of cities

The future of the city nothing but good.

10. Personal contribution to urban development

Thinking with and against. Stroom The Hague aims to be a knowledge center, that from an unbound position and from cultural perspective vision, inspiration, solutions and awareness regarding the city and the urban environment. The way in which political and administrative situation is currently developing, making the need for this kind of knowledge much greater.

11. Guerrilla in the city?

Fashionable coquetry, while it lacks real need. In the Netherlands, guerrilla gardening has become primarily a lifestyle issue. Sense that it provides a real felt need (handmade car bridge over a city river / open sewer connecting two parts of the city in Douala, Cameroun by Ties ten Bosch).